This week I found three scenes in the same movie, Fast and Furious 2 movie. Those three scenes have a common shooting way.

1. Brian and Mia, at dinner, the restaurant scene

This scene contains a very smooth, casual panning, but causal doesn’t mean that camera is panning with no certain framings and angles. Also it is a medium speed of panning, not very fast. Camera first stops at the statue, and then music starts, and camera starts panning as well. From audience’s view, it’s like the camera is our eyes, searching for Brian and Mia, stop for like nearly one second for some people and tables and check. After that continue searching. Audience hear their voices before see their face, so this is a good motivation for audience to search for them, and director satisfied audience’s thoughts by a camera panning. This panning also makes audience feel like going and sitting in that restaurant too, this makes movie mood nicer.

2. Brian and Mia in bed, Brian picking a phone call scene

In this scene, camera tracks wiggly with Brain’s phone ringing, tracking and phone ringing at the same time. As I wrote in the first scene, camera is like audience’s eyes, finding where does the sound come from? The frame is also clever in this scene. every time camera stop tracking for one second, in the frame there will be a shelf with car elements on it. Camera stops tracking when Brian sits up quickly, and the frame stay still with Mia sits up too.

3. Brian and Jesse, at the car racing site

This scene also contains two pannings. The first panning is from a high angle, panning with Brian’s car moving, through the entire car racing site. Audience can see a lot in that frame, gorgeous car ladies walking around, lots of cars parking there, people laughing, cheering… Another panning of Brain and Jesse walking through the site and talking. About this panning, it is like panning far away from the characters. There are lots of other people in the site walking pass the camera, and they also get blocked by something during the walking. But we can hear their voice clearly. This is a brilliant way to bring audiences into the atmosphere.

The common thing about those three scenes is that it makes audiences feel personally on the scene by shooting with different angles and perspectives. This movie is about cars, this theme is also very well presented in those scenes. There are lots of car racing scene in this movie which makes the movie mood cool and fast. The pannings and trackings are kind of fast, but is like stable and well framed kind of fast and with an aim, not like aimlessly panning around and confuses audiences. I found them very enjoyable to watch.